Habitat for Humanity along with three other area housing agencies, County Corp, Miami Valley Community Action Partnership and Rebuilding Together Dayton, are still fielding calls and taking on new jobs for uninsured or underinsured homeowners with lingering damage.
The four agencies want homeowners who remain in need to reach out as soon as possible because up to $20,000 available for each repair project through the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) of Cincinnati goes away next June.
“All four of us are doing whatever we can to get as many people helped as possible before that deadline,” said Amy Radachi, president and CEO of Rebuilding Together Dayton.
Rebuilding Together Dayton brought on an Americorp disaster resiliency fellow for the next eight months to concentrate on the persisting demand, Radachi said.
“We’re willing to help people as much as hard as we can to see that they get the help they need,” she said.
A record-setting 16 twisters hit the western side of Ohio that night, including a powerful EF4 tornado that tore across Montgomery County leaving 915 structures uninhabitable, a disproportionate majority in lower income areas where fewer owners were likely to be covered by insurance.
FHLB made available $5 million to homeowners in declared disaster areas last year in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The four local housing agencies were approved to each process $500,000 in FHLB assistance over a calendar year. But the program deadline for the Ohio tornadoes is June 18, now less than 10 months away.
Homeowners can get up to $20,000 that doesn’t have to be repaid. To qualify, a property must be owner-occupied and the applicant must meet income eligibility requirements of no more than $79,005 for a household of three or more people.
“We’d like to have as many people that need help reach out to us sooner rather than later so that we’re not missing the opportunity to get the funding,” Miozzi said.
While sorting out insurance was a primary problem in the months immediately following the tornadoes, current holdups are due to unresponsive contractors, the coronavirus pandemic, or homeowners “still in limbo because they don’t know what to do,” Radachi said.
Rebuilding Together Dayton has completed 14 disaster recovery projects of which 12 utilized the FHLB funds. Thirteen more projects are underway with another five in the application stage. More than 1,300 volunteer hours have gone into the projects equating to about $34,500, according to Radachi.
Habitat for Humanity has completed about 20 tornado repairs and another 10 are currently in the works. The repairs have been substantial, ranging between $15,000 and $20,000. The value could be 30% above that due to volunteer labor, Miozzi said.
Miozzi said the FHLB funding has accommodated most tornado repairs, but the largest rebuilds have required the help of other groups as well as resource table funding through the Miami Valley Long Term Recovery Operations Group, which organizes the work for survivors who entered the 2-1-1 case management system before the Aug. 1 deadline.
At the beginning of this month, the case management system had 451 open cases including 221 homeowners needing help with repairs. About 30 rebuilding jobs had been completed with 63 more underway, according to the recovery group, which is receiving volunteer labor from national organizations including Brethren Disaster Ministries and Mennonite Disaster Services.
Miozzi said some people are just now calling — nearly 15 months after the tornadoes — because they didn’t know who to contact or they discovered a job was too big to handle once starting it on their own.
“Some of that could be pride, or thinking that I can take care of this myself,” he said. “But we want people to know that you don’t have to take care of it yourself.”
Getting tornado-damaged homes repaired not only makes families whole, but mends entire neighborhoods, Miozzi said.
“The repair is just a repair, but rebuilding the community is really the goal for all of the organizations involved,” Miozzi said.
Help for tornado repairs still available
County Corp
937-225-6328
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Dayton
937-586-0860
Miami Valley Community Action Partnership
937-341-5000
Rebuilding Together Dayton
937-223-4893
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